Competition: Set text

In Competition No. 2746 you were invited to submit a sonnet using the following rhymes: pig, bat, cat, wig, jig, hat, rat, fig; lie, red, sob, die, bed, rob. This is a rerun of a brute of a competition that was set back in the 1950s, and the daft rhymes are those given as an illustration of the verse form by the Concise Oxford Dictionary of that time. The final rhyme proved especially bothersome, frequently scuppering otherwise excellent entries.

Nonsense verse was the obvious way to go but a fair few forged ingenious alternative routes. It was a large entry and the standard was high. Well deserved commendations go to Peter Smaill, Janet Kenny, Jenny Hill, Paul Evans, James Bench-Capon, John Beaton, D.A. Prince and Noel Petty. The winners are printed below and are  rewarded with £20 each. W.J Webster nabs the bonus fiver.

Ah, she had been sweet clover to his pig,
A high, cathedral cavern to his bat,
While he was spiked nemeta to her cat,
The pen to complement her Fleet Street wig.
As one they’d learnt the music of the jig,
And found a home where they could hang a hat;
Had made each other’s pet names Mole and Rat
And played their game of fig leaf over fig.
Their Eden, though, was withered by a lie:
Suspicion drained love’s rose of all its red,
And left no more than silence and a sob.
What they had been was doomed to fade and die,
As mortal things all come to one cold bed.
There is no place on earth time will not rob.
W.J. Webster

Did Petrarch find the sonnet was a pig,
Like trying to track the flight-path of a bat,
Or second-guessing a domestic cat?
My feeling is he often flipped his wig
And danced a desperate, frustrated jig
While shouting, as he trampled on his hat,
‘It’s only fourteen lines, but love a rat —
It’s worse than swallowing a rotten fig!’
At other times the sonneteer would lie
Hugging a pillow, face tomato-red,
And curse with each self-dramatising sob
‘This ABBA gubbins makes me want to die!’
Then suddenly he’d leap out of his bed
And find a rival poet’s verse to rob.